The Hurt Locker

Grade: C+

Let’s all chip in and make a movie that takes place in Iraq - it’s a surefire beeline to the Oscars. Nominated for nine Academy Awards including Best Picture, and still I look forward to the Academy Awards every year.

The definition of insanity.

After about 15 minutes into this film, I stopped watching the movie and started counting the clichés. It’s an impressive list, if I must say so myself:

1. Maverick commander who everyone hates and contemplates killing but who ends up taking better care of his men than anyone anticipates.

2. Surprise attacks. And more surprise attacks. And more surprise attacks. Usually starting with someone being shot dead in surprise fashion.

3. Good guys being mistaken for bad guys.

4. Star cameos = death in one scene.

5. American commander letting Iraqi civilians die because he can.

6. Soldier removing his headset so he doesn’t have to follow instructions.

7. Ammo running out at the most inopportune moments.

8. The military therapist who’s never seen real action so can’t truly understand what the men go through. What do we think will happen to said doc when he finally joins his patient on a mission?

9. Jamming guns.

10. Pulsating, throbbing music, choppy camera editing.

11. Every other scene someone yelling “Put the mother fucking gun down!” Alternative: “Get down. Get the fuck down.”

12. “Days Left” in Bravo Company’s rotation flashing on the screen every 15 minutes or so.

13. Lines like, “If I’m gonna die, I wanna die comfortable.” Or “What’s the best way you go about disarming these things?” “The way you don’t die, sir.” Or “Kill that fucking asshole.” Or “He’s down. Good night. Thanks for playing.” Or “It’s real quiet. I don’t like it.” Or “You’re not good with people but you’re a hell of a warrior.” Or “I’m too old for this shit.”

14. Gun shells dropping to the ground in slow motion.

15. Finding a smoldering cigarette when entering an enemy layer, to signify they just left moments before.

16. Fight Club.

17. An officer befriending a little kid.

18. Carrying a dead child through the streets in Christlike fashion.

19. The call home to the wife. She picks up, somehow knowing it’s him. “Will?” “Will?” “Will?” Will hangs up, unable to speak.

20. Iraqis unable to speak English until a gun is put to their temples. Then they speak English.

21. “Apocalypse Now” fires raging in darkness scene.

22. Figuring out where the bad guys are hiding for no explicable reason whatsoever.

23. Music that sounds like a heartbeat.

24. Distraught soldier standing in the shower with all his clothes on.

25. The soldier unable to acclimate to home life.

The performances are universally solid, especially Jeremy Renner as an adrenaline addicted bomb expert. Everything else is merely adequate or expected. The film’s final moments are indeed painfully sad and haunting, but they deserve to be in a superior film. The fact that the story is based on a “fictional retelling” by a freelance journalist who wanted to tell of the “kinds of things that soldiers go through that you can't see on CNN” makes it all the more irritating for how false it all feels.

And the winner is…..I just know I’m gonna be pissed.

More movie info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887912/

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

Grade: Non Applicable

Yes, I’m totally copping out. Call a cop.

As a young woman who has survived more physical, emotional and spiritual brutality than any human being should ever have to endure, Gabourey Sidibe is nothing short of absolutely brilliant.

As a mother who is one of the most severely, disturbingly damaged individuals one is ever likely to encounter, Mo’Nique is nothing short of absolutely brilliant. She damn well better win the Oscar.

As a teacher who gives a damn - heart, mind and soul - for her students, Paula Patton is brilliant. Her students are so jarringly, beautifully, endearingly portrayed I'm still not sure if they were actors or not.

And yes, as a social worker in way over-her-head but trying, trying, trying valiantly on behalf of her client, Mariah Carey is brilliant (so much so that I knew I knew her but couldn’t place where).

And the film is so bleak, dire and depressing I literally wanted to put a bullet into my brain.

Raped, brutalized, exploited by both father and mother, Precious is a character who will sear herself into your memory. Emotionally vacant, dead inside, much of the film is a flatline of utter despair and hopelessness. Glimpses into a fantasy life represent her only fleeting moments of relief, all too quickly dragged back into the reality of a sub-human but all too human existence. She is a survivor, she is a fighter, she is indomitable, but she is also rather doomed.

Have you broken out the flask yet? It gets worse.

As a mother who is broken beyond all repair, Mo’Nique portrays a woman almost animalistic (scratch the almost) in her craven need for her twisted and distorted definition of love. She is an inner child howling for someone to take care of her, but she is so cruel, evil and destructive that one’s unwilling sympathy merges with much greater contempt and the desire that someone please put her out of her misery. And ours.

There’s family dysfunction, and then there’s something so far beyond that Webster’s has yet to put a name to it.

It is impossible to grade this film because, as harrowing, real, moving and illuminating much of it may be, I simply refuse to take on the responsibility of recommending you sit through it. It would be like encouraging you to invade someone’s privacy.

Several years back, I attended an event for the Lesbian and Gay Anti-Violence Project, where the “entertainment” was a woman who sang of the brutality perpetrated against her people:

I’m black, and you beat my body. I’m in chains, and you beat me down...

No one really knew whether to be moved or mortified. Personally, I chose the latter.

I’m reminded of the experience because, yes indeed, life is a bitch and then you die. I’m not sure just how much I want to be reminded how very much worse it is for others than it is for me. I guess I’m an awful human being that way.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

More More Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929632/

Inglourious Basterds

Grade: B

I’m always put off by directors who desperately want to be noticed. Never mind the screenplay, the performances, or even those pesky little things called facts, I can’t help but think of Rudy Guiliani’s first Mayoral inauguration when his young son kept popping up from behind the podium, stepping on his Daddy’s lines and mugging for the camera as though begging, “look at me look at me look at me.”

Okay, little Quentin, we’re looking we’re looking.

In his masturbatory fantasia that bears no relation to actual WW II history, director Quentin Tarantino knows how to spin a fantastical yarn while photographing depictions of violence in all their obsessively blood spurting glory. He masterfully succeeds in treating every scene as a mini-opera, powerhouse vignettes that build tension and gravitas while never quite telegraphing how they will play out or ultimately fit into the scheme of the story. He is also a genuine auteur at inserting intensely modern sensibilities into another era, at once highly entertaining and intentionally jarring. He seems delighted at his ability to keep us off-balance, but also a little too self-impressed with how smart and offbeat he is by half.

Just to make sure we’re paying attention, Quentin underscores all his crescendos with a variety of musical stylings which include latin guitar strumming, eclectic pop music, and the ever-dreaded choral arrangements – everything and anything so long as it bears no resemblance to the film’s actual time period. While subtitles are most welcome and ingeniously utilized to fuck with us and his characters, his trademark use of superimposed captions have now become merely tiresome and distracting.

Brad Pitt, clearly having the time of his life, portrays a Tennessee good ole boy who runs a special ops unit of assorted Jewish-American oddballs who make their way into German-occupied France to kill (and scalp) Nazis. Their motivation is to kill (and scalp) Nazis. Never for a moment do we forget we are watching Brad Pitt having the time of his life. Killing and scalping Nazis. He also loves to brand the few and far between he allows to survive with swastikas on their foreheads. It’s all ghoulishly satisfying, but also lacking in any real depth or motivation.

(Spoiler Alert: If you want to see Adolph Hitler’s face blown to smithereens Brian DePalma style, this is the film for you. Forget about Eva and the bunker, pesky details about what actually occurred during WW II would get in the way of Tarantino’s reverie.)

Christopher Waltz stands out as a marginally nutty “Jew Hunter,” an insanely brilliant investigator, connivingly evil, but nevertheless deliciously fun to watch –a moral center is not the film’s strong suit. Mélanie Laurent glows as a Jew inexplicably permitted to survive as a youth who matures into a very vengeful young woman (kinda hard to blame her) and Diane Kruger delights in the glamorous role of a movie star gone rebel.

The film’s climax, the burning of a cinema filled to capacity with those pesky Nazi’s, is oddly anti-climactic. Think a poor man’s “Godfather.” Or just think of “Godfather III.” After two and a half hours, Tarantino has petered out.

It’s all highly intriguing, beautifully filmed, offbeat and undeniably entertaining. Yet ultimately, it is also frustratingly pointless.

And, um, what’s with the misspelling of the title? Pretentious much?

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361748/

Up

Grade: A

PIXAR’S bestest everer.

Anyone who doesn’t absolutely adore this picture has a heart of stone covered in ice buried six feet under.

If Republicans, Democrats, Socialists and Tea Baggers were all made to watch this film together, we would have world peace, an end to global warming, universal health care, and an end to world hunger in no time.

We might even see Levi Johnston and Sarah Palin embrace one another.

Okay, maybe I overstep. But it really is that poignant and magical.

The stage is set with an opening montage that is one of the most moving portrayals of dreams unfulfilled in the name of life and love one is ever likely to see. Fellow childhood adventurers become husband and wife and, somewhere along the line, their lofty plans of travel and exploration never quite come to pass. Time simply runs out.

As an elderly man who believes he left a promise broken to the one he loved, the voice of Ed Asner provides the crusty but tender center of everything that follows. We would expect nothing else. Thanks to PIXAR’s miraculous animation, facial expressions are beyond extraordinary – grief, grumpiness, chagrin, world weariness, invigoration, joy and tenderness are as real as real can be. Like the thousands of muti-colored balloons that lift a man’s life and home into a world of adventure, the film captures a rainbow of emotions, and our hearts. Not since “Mary Poppins” opened her umbrella has whimsy taken such unabashed flight.

As the plump scout who needs to help the elderly in order to advance to his next troop level, Jordan Nagai is every bit a boy – overly enthusiastic and exuberant, clumsy, whiny, wide-eyed and filled with wonder, he is the product of a broken home and an abundant love of chocolate. How many of us were that chubby kid who couldn’t climb the rope in gym class? (I know my hand is raised.) “The wilderness isn’t quite what I expected,” he announces, “it’s wild.” This is one unintentionally funny kid.

And then there’s Christopher Plummer, Asner’s boyhood hero gone bad. Get these two guys on a stage together while there’s still time.

Moments of pure comic genius mix seamlessly with genuinely thrilling sequences that will have you nail biting and cheering. In the end, Asner comes to realize it was the normal, everyday and mundane moments in life that mattered the most all along. The true adventure is simply being with the one you love.

I cried with relish, and so will you – cross my heart.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049413/

Up in the Air

Grade: A

Uncompromising.

There’s nothing more professionally agonizing than laying someone off from work. That said, I’ve discovered I’m quite good at it. Hidden talent, so to speak. I get through it by convincing myself they’d rather hear the news from someone who gives a shit than from someone who doesn’t. I also find a klonopin an hour before and many glasses of wine after also help. The hardest part is acknowledging – no matter how stressful, sad, or upsetting it may be, no matter how many sleepless nights it may take in preparation – it’s not about you. Not even a little.

George Clooney spends his life on airplanes. His life goal is to join the elite 10 million mile frequent flier club. His check-ins at airports and hotels is masterful. His methodology toward getting through security is a thing of beauty. He fires people for a living. From the sky he looks down on America, from Kansas City to Detroit, New York to San Francisco, Omaha to Miami, St. Louis to Las Vegas. The landscapes are all different, but the heartache he executes is universal. We are one America in a devastating economy. Disciplined, systematic, businesslike, almost ritualistic, he is neither unsympathetic nor heartless. Merely disconnected. Just the way he likes it.

Clooney is ideally cast as the charmer with a cynical veneer that ever so slowly begins to crumble. There are no sweeping revelatory moments, few grand gestures and none that result in a romantic Hollywood pay-off, simply a man who comes to realize his isolationist philosophy has resulted in a life empty and alone. Subtly heartbreaking, a Clooney smirk is suddenly transformed into quite the devastating thing.

Stylized, crisp, caustic and unapologetically cool, writer/director Jason Reitman unflinchingly delivers the non-feel-good film of the year. Often bitingly and brutally funny, with dialogue Mamet would kill for, not since “American Beauty” has a film captured the longing of a life and a culture so perilously off track.

As a love interest with a crackling cynicism all her own, Vera Farminga is completely appealing, thoroughly non-plussed, and happily non-committal. While the romance initially feels rushed and underdeveloped, the mushy middle of an otherwise completely baked cake, a sudden turn toward steely hardness catches one off guard and pierces Clooney’s thawing heart. And ours. Anna Kendrick plays the upstart up-and-comer with a plan to contain costs by firing people remotely, initially coldly pragmatic about the insult she plans to add to individual injury until she begins firing people herself – a traumatic scene in which she fires a company man via webcam becomes truly haunting when she finally and reluctantly crosses his name off a very long list of names to follow.

Small acts of tenderness play out in quietly dignified ways, desperation never quite percolates out from underneath the surface. Sentimentality be damned, the film bravely remains true to a man who lives thousands of feet above the earth, never really connected to himself or anyone around him. The tragedy is that he knows it and, while he helps others find redemption, he never quite finds it for himself.

“What’s the point?” a brother-in-law-to-be asks a stubbornly shut down Clooney. “There is no point,” he is told, “I guess life is just better when you have a co-pilot.”

A lesson too late learned.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1193138/